Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Thursday May 16, 2013 @02:07PM
from the off-to-the-gulag dept.

mask.of.sanity writes with news of the jail sentences for three members of LulzSec. From the article: "Three members of the hacktivist group LulzSec have been sentenced to a total of six years in prison. Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis and Mustafa al-Bassam were charged with attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Sony, Nintendo, 20th Century Fox and governments and police forces in a 50-day spree in the summer of 2011. Davis was sentenced to 24 months in a young offender's institution and he will serve half of the sentence. Al-Bassam received a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years and 300 hours unpaid work. Ackroyd was given a 30-month sentence; he will serve half. Cleary also pleaded guilty to possession of child abuse images following a second arrest on October 4, 2012. He will be sentenced at separate hearing."The Guardian has a short article on the remaining loose ends in the story of LulzSec.

The best way to not get caught, is to not do it.A very few hackers can actually make themselves untraceable. For the most part most of them just don't get hunted down because no one wants to put the resources to find them. Even with tough talk from Corporate Execs, and government officials, They usually just check to make sure the guy wasn't obviously dumb. But if they get hit hard enough to make tracking them down worth it, they could dig down and catch many more hackers who think they are doing a good

These aren't short prison terms by UK standards. It's uncommon to get sentenced to more than two years for computer crime. [computerevidence.co.uk] Ryan Cleary, who got the longest sentence, apparently ran a large botnet for hire, when he wasn't doing it for the lulz. Bot herders tend to get treated relatively severely (rightly so IMHO).

You forget to disable the hyperbole filter before posting. You best be careful with that, miss. Were you to post on the wrong topic, you could find a constable at the door, and yourself up on charges.

. . . the very same words can be proof of two entirely different hate crimes. Iqbal Sacranie is a Muslim of such exemplary "moderation" he's been knighted by the Queen. The head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal was interviewed on the BBC and expressed the view that homosexuality was "immoral," was

Those quotes are not "exactly the same thing," and Mark Steyn does not appear to be a very balanced commentator. Did you actually want to try a hand at a more serious debate or are we just sharing quotes from grumpy Torontonians?

I'm all ears if you actually want to have a conversation. Here, I'll start:

Saying homosexuality is "immoral" is an attack on homosexuality, and saying Islam is "a barmy doctrine" is an attack on Islam. These are not "exactly the same thing," and they deserve different responses. Unless Steyn was selective quoting things to make his stance look weaker? Neither GALHA nor Iqbal restrained their words to strictly objective observations; GALHA in particular could have avoided flak by citing Iqbal's statements an

Only in the US could this be considered a "light" sentence, but then this is where we (collectively) are into "lets-always-mete-out-totally-disproportionate-punishment-to-individuals-hoping-that-it-might-make-others-think-twice".

Not every country shares US values of callously destroying individuals to give the Law a veneer of menace.

The hackers making money don't brag about their exploits. The hackers making money do not trust anyone they might correspond with on the Internet. The hackers making money are way more talented than these script kiddie knuckleheads who basically used known exploits against systems not up to date with the latest security patches.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think the sentences are reasonable. However, given how insane recent sentences have been for any computer related crime, I fully expected all of them to get 50 years with billions of dollars of fines.

It's six years if you add up the maximum time for all three sentences combined. Two of them will only have to serve half of their time and the other one is getting no prison time at all. That seems pretty fair to me.

Which is exactly what the criminals were hoping you'd say. Rather than say "each received sentences of 15-24 months," it packs more punch to word it ambiguously, and leave people feeling sorry for these punk kids who "got sentenced to up to 6 years in prison! For minor crimes!"

"24 months in a young offender's institution and he will serve half of the sentence" = 12 months in juvie. Poor kid, he'll have to leave his mom's basement for a year.

"20 month sentence, suspended for 2 years and 300 hours unpaid work" = keep out of trouble, and do 300 hours of community service over the next 2 years, and he doesn't go to prison at all.

"30 month sentence, he will serve half" = 15 months in prison. The harshest of the penalties, and still a pretty fucking light sentence.

Rape can get you imprisoned up to and including a life sentence in the UK [cps.gov.uk], Not sure where you get that there's a "maximum of 5 years" for rape. In fact, the most lenient of the "starting points" and "typical ranges" list 5 years at the LOW end of the punishment, before aggravating/mitigating factors are considered.

Prison is for long term stays. They have a library, exercise facilities, chapel (if you're into that sort of thing). County is for holding people. They provide only the absolute minimum necessary to keep the person alive, if you're lucky.

Check out this thread [prisontalk.com] from people with experience on both sides. I'll quote:

I did 370 days in the county before getting my time and going to prison. My jail time was 10 times worse than my prison time. We were locked down 23 hours a day, only got out to shower, etc. The

When I was in county they served some of the nastiest food I've ever seen. Everyone kept saying how much better the food was in state...

I'll take prison over county any day, It's honestly the difference between molding bread/fruit and freshly baked pizza. The inmates likened it to the US Army v. US Navy when it comes to rations. The longer you're away from civility, the better the meals have to be. Even the inmates that worked in the kitchen were retentive about how food was

But there are distinctions made among prisoners that determine where you end up. ..

Of course, but that's in terms of security. Not severity of punishment. Though I'm sure the harshness does vary in practice, I'd imagine most of that is who you have to share the prison with. Maximum security murderers or minimum security computer hackers and politicians...

The 2008 financial crisis caused the destruction of far, far more wealth than *ALL PROPERTY CRIME PUT TOGETHER*. If we chose to do "only one thing and suspend everything else", that is prosecute the criminals behind the 2008 financial crisis, and ignore all other property crimes, we'd still be ahead of where we are now.

The 2008 financial crisis caused the destruction of far, far more wealth than *ALL PROPERTY CRIME PUT TOGETHER*. If we chose to do "only one thing and suspend everything else", that is prosecute the criminals behind the 2008 financial crisis, and ignore all other property crimes, we'd still be ahead of where we are now.

but it was destruction of value which never was in the first place, doh.

Well it is actually an average about 2 years of punishment, with most of them getting time out.

But if you think about it how much time should you really put someone in jail for in a white collar crime.The idea of a Jail is more about keeping dangerous/people who will run away people in a place where they cannot escape to create more harm to the community.

For punishment a year or two in jail, is often enough to get the idea what you did was wrong, enough time to break you. Especially for kids where a year s

Under federal law, the punishment for rape can range from a fine to life imprisonment. The severity of the punishment is based on the use of violence, the age of the victim, and whether drugs or intoxicants were used to override consent. If the perpetrator is a repeat offender the law prescribes automatically doubling the maximum sentence.